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The news is that the Israeli security cabinet has provided Ariel Sharon with
a "licence to kill" Yasser Arafat, at a time of Mr. Sharon's own choosing.
(Their word was "remove" and might also include expulsion, isolation, or
imprisonment.) The mystery is, why didn't this happen many years ago?

Before reaching their decision -- predictably execrated in capitals around
the world -- the security cabinet reviewed recent evidence linking Arafat
directly to several of the terrorist hits within Israel's Green Line. To
their information, he didn't just know about them, he ordered them.

And he did that, not out of any psychopathic desire to see more dead
Israelis on TV, but rather out of cold political calculation. He decided it
was time to rid himself of Mahmoud Abbas, a.k.a. Abu Mazen, the prime
minister he appointed to be the "acceptable face" of Palestinian terror for
the Israelis and Americans to negotiate with. It was time to remind both the
foreigners, and his colleagues, who is boss.

The new "prime minister" is Ahmed Qureia, a.k.a. Abu Ala. His background is
almost identical to that of Abu Mazen; another veteran of the Oslo process.

The idea that Arafat had been sidelined was one of the more ludicrous of the
"pious frauds" circulated by all partners to the "peace process" recently. I
'm sorry to say President Bush invested some of his credibility in this.

Arafat was never sidelined, and the appointment of Abu Ala to replace Abu
Mazen changes nothing. The men of Arafat's diplomatic wing are as
interchangeable as the men of his military-terrorist wing, it's all one
bird. The strategy remains, wear Israel down by both terror and diplomacy,
as opportunities arise, and continue wearing her down, patiently, until
eventually she collapses.

The domestic propaganda of the PLO -- also under Arafat's control -- has
never made any bones about this. Nor has Arafat recently, or ever, ceased to
utter incitements to the Palestinian mob. An occasional, contrastingly
benign remark in English to the Western media is all he requires to remain
semi-respectable to the outside world.

Israel is a country as diverse in its opinions as any Western land. It
contains more Jews than New York, and at least as many "liberals". Israel
itself has taken ten years to come to terms with the hopeless situation that
was created by the Oslo accord, in which a man dedicated to Israel's
destruction was given unchallenged dictatorial power over a de facto country
as far away as Hull from Ottawa, while being internationally accredited as
Israel's "peace partner".

At several points in her past -- most memorably when she struck first in the
Six-Day War of 1967, and when IDF pilots levelled the Osirak reactor in Iraq
in 1981 -- Israel became convinced that she must ignore world opinion and do
what she must to survive. This is another of those times.

It is moreover clear from the polls in Israel, that the country demands the
removal of Arafat, who is their single most deadly and dangerous enemy. The
threat he offers has grown larger than that of Osama or Saddam to the U.S.
And if the Israeli military have finally been ordered to directly attack
Hamas and other terrorist leaders, why not remove the queen bee from the
hive?

The world will wail, and undoubtedly the Arab Street will fill. The U.S.
secretary of state, Colin Powell, will utter sombre statements. President
Bush himself either has or has not expressed himself to Prime Minister
Sharon privately. And the removal of Arafat will be, at least in the short
term, extremely inconvenient to immediate American interests throughout the
region.

But it will also strike to the heart of the long-term problem, as did the
U.S. invasion of Iraq. It will compel the Palestinians to form a new
leadership, and it will communicate the Israeli will to survive to the Arab
world at large. No single act, since the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq,
is likely to have a more positive actual effect on regional security --
after the debris has cleared.

The verbal threats of retaliation against Israel for anything done to Arafat
are now running very shrill. But there is a Baghdad Bob quality about all of
them. In practice, the actual dangers associated with leaving Arafat in
power exceed the likely dangers of removing him.

By pre-announcing their decision, the Israeli leadership gave themselves the
opportunity for sober second thought, should any unexpected danger present
itself. Their one hesitation is over the reaction of the Bush
administration. Would it, too, be purely verbal? I think the consensus of
Israeli politicians is that domestic views in the U.S. will prevent the Bush
administration from abandoning Israel, after Israel has done precisely what
the U.S. did in Afghanistan and Iraq -- "regime change". It would look too
much like hypocrisy.

They have given Arafat, in effect, the equivalent to President Bush's last
warning to Saddam. They cannot expect it to be heeded.

We shall see: but I think under the present circumstances, Arafat will
actually be removed. The man is the regime, as throughout the Middle East;
and regime-change is necessarily quite personal.

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JWR contributor David Warren is a Columnist for the
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